A north man who was previously caught with a record cache of downloaded indecent images of children has been jailed for 18 months for possession of more images.
Iain McIntyre, formerly of Inverness, was jailed for 18 months in 2011 for possessing 170,234 still images and nearly 1,000 videos – at the time, the largest haul uncovered in the Highlands.
McIntyre, 47, was monitored by police following the Edinburgh High Court conviction – and officers discovered 3,716 indecent images and 80 video fragments on his computer.
At Inverness Sheriff Court last month, McIntyre, now of Tain’s Mansfield Estate, admitted downloading the illegal images between April 2018 and February last year.
Sentence was deferred until yesterday for a background report.
Depute fiscal Karen Aitken told the court that on February 14 last year police went to McIntyre’s home as part of routine monitoring and risk management.
She said there were concerns about his internet search activity on his mobile phone and explicit but legal material on his laptop.
His laptop was then analysed and the images of girls as young as eight were found.
Defence solicitor David Paterson told Sheriff Margaret Neilson that when McIntyre was last convicted he had taken the material on his computers to the police himself.
Sentencing him in 2011, Lord Brailsford told McIntyre: “There appears to have been no attempt to distribute these images.”
Lord Brailsford also noted that when McIntyre became aware of his “inappropriate attraction to adolescent females” he had sought to draw that to the attention of police and went to a consultant psychiatrist.
The High Court had heard that McIntyre had been referred to the police by his psychiatrist.
Previously, a family member had claimed McIntyre suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.
It also emerged that, prior to the 2011 case, the divorced father was already being monitored by police although he had no previous convictions or pending cases against him.
When interviewed, McIntyre told officers: “I don’t know what to say, got caught up doing things, like a drug I suppose, sexual perversion.”
